Wednesday, August 1, 2018

The Value in Using Insurance Claim Status Notes

Dealing with dental insurance is a necessary evil in our profession. Tracking outstanding insurance claims is an important, on-going task in all offices that accept insurance payments. Having an organized tracking system can make this job easier.

A general goal for offices, except for ortho, is not to have any outstanding insurance claims over 60 days past due. To obtain this goal you must dedicate time daily to follow up on insurance claims. Once you have contacted an insurance company to find out the status of an outstanding claim, Dentrix has a specific place to record this information.

In the patient’s Ledger, double-click the insurance claim to open the insurance claim window.

Dentrix will automatically enter the date the claim was created and sent. Double-click the Status block to open the Insurance Claim Status window. There are fields available for you to make detailed notes regarding the status of this insurance claim. For example, you could make a note explaining that the insurance carrier is requesting X-ray, sent X-ray today. By adding notes in the Claim Status Note field, you or anyone else in the office can see when the last time the claim status was updated and what action was taken. You also have the option to check the box and enter the applicable date if Tracer Sent (meaning you attempted to track the claim), if the claim is On-Hold, if it was Re-Sent or Voided.

The advantage to making claim status notes within the insurance claim is that when you run the Insurance Aging Report (Office Manager > Reports > Ledger > Insurance Aging Report) you have an option to view the status notes on this report.

Printing claim status notes on the Insurance Aging report is beneficial because if you can see that a claim that was resent yesterday, you may not want to contact the insurance company again regarding this claim. This can save you a lot of valuable time.

Example of how claim status notes print on the Insurance Aging Report.

Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.